MACK
The conference is ended, friends, I say,
And orders will be issued here forthwith.
[Guns heard.]
AN OFFICER
Surely that’s from the Michaelsberg above us?
MACK
Never care. Here we stay. In five more days
The Russians hail, and we regain our bays.
[Exeunt severally.]
SCENE IV
BEFORE ULM. THE SAME DAY
[A high wind prevails, and rain falls in torrents. An elevated
terrace near Elchingen forms the foreground.]
DUMB SHOW
From the terrace BONAPARTE surveys and dictates operations against
the entrenched heights of the Michaelsberg that rise in the middle
distance on the right above the city. Through the gauze of
descending waters the French soldiery can be discerned climbing
to the attack under NEY.
They slowly advance, recede, re-advance, halt. A time of suspense
follows. Then they are seen in a state of irregular movement, even
confusion; but in the end they carry the heights with the bayonet.
Below the spot whereon NAPOLÉON and his staff are gathered,
glistening wet and plastered with mud, obtrudes on the left the
village of Elchingen, now in the hands of the French. Its white-
walled monastery, its bridge over the Danube, recently broken by
the irresistible NEY, wear a desolated look, and the stream, which
is swollen by the rainfall and rasped by the storm, seems wanly to
sympathize.
Anon shells are dropped by the French from the summits they have
gained into the city below. A bomb from an Austrian battery falls
near NAPOLÉON, and in bursting raises a fountain of mud. The
Emperor retreats with his officers to a less conspicuous station.
Meanwhile LANNES advances from a position near NAPOLÉON till his
columns reach the top of the Frauenberg hard by. The united corps
of LANNES and NEY descend on the inner slope of the heights towards
the city walls, in the rear of the retreating Austrians. One
of the French columns scales a bastion, but NAPOLÉON orders the
assault to be discontinued, and with the wane of day the spectacle
disappears.
SCENE V
THE SAME. THE MICHAELSBERG
[A chilly but rainless noon three days later. At the back of the
scene, northward, rise the Michaelsberg heights; below stretches
the panorama of the city and the Danube. On a secondary eminence
forming a spur of the upper hill, a fire of logs is burning, the
foremost group beside it being NAPOLÉON and his staff, the former
in his shabby greatcoat and plain turned-up hat, walking to and
fro with his hands behind him, and occasionally stopping to warm
himself. The French infantry are drawn up in a dense array at
the back of these.
The whole Austrian garrison of Ulm marches out of the city gate
opposite NAPOLÉON. GENERAL MACK is at the head, followed by
GIULAY, GOTTESHEIM, KLINAU, LICHTENSTEIN, and many other officers,
who advance to BONAPARTE and deliver their swords.]
MACK
Behold me, Sire. Mack the unfortunate!
NAPOLÉON
War, General, ever has its ups and downs,
And you must take the better and the worse
As impish chance or destiny ordains.
Come near and warm you here. A glowing fire
Is life on the depressing, mired, moist days
Of smitten leaves down-dropping clammily,
And toadstools like the putrid lungs of men.
[To his Lieutenants.] Cause them so stand to right and left of me.
[The Austrian officers arrange themselves as directed, and the
body of the Austrians now file past their Conqueror, laying down
their arms as they approach; some with angry gestures and words,
others in moody silence.]
Listen, I pray you, Generals gathered her.
I tell you frankly that I know not why
Your master wages this wild war with me.
I know not what he seeks by such injustice,
Unless to give me practice in my trade—
That of a soldier—whereto I was bred:
Deemed he my craft might slip from me, unplied?
Let him now own me still a dab therein!